Jamie Nares

Jamie Nares (formerly James Nares; born 1953 in London, England) is a British transgender woman artist living and working in New York City since 1974. Nares makes paintings and films (most notably the no wave film Rome '78), and played guitar in the no wave groups James Chance and the Contortions and the Del-Byzanteens (the latter also including Jim Jarmusch).

Early life and art education

Nares attended the Chelsea Art School in London from 1972 to 1973. She later studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1974 to 1976.

Painting

Nares is best known as a contemporary art painter. Her method involves repeated strokes that eventually create a precise representation.

She is known for employing single but intricate gestural brush strokes in most of her works. Grace Glueck, New York Times art critic, described the effect of Nares's paintings as a combination of Japanese calligraphy and the 1960s cartoon works of Roy Lichtenstein. These techniques have been compared to those of the Action Painters as well as Abstract Expressionists. Her work is exhibited in various museums in the United States: such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Some of her solo exhibitions include 1976: Films and Other Works at Paul Kasmin Gallery, in New York in 2012, and Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the present in 2010 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain.

Nares's other solo exhibitions include New Paintings in 2004 at the Hamiltons Gallery in London and the New Paintings and Chronophotographs exhibition in 2005 at the Goss Gallery in Dallas. Her works were also featured in the Painting and Sculpture exhibition at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City in 2010.

Rizzoli published a monograph dedicated to Nares's works in 2013.

When speaking on her work, Nares once stated:

I try to embody the nature and combine the forms—it's like one and one making three—to expose a metaphor of some kind. It's searching for metaphors, for likeness, like a breeding ground. It seems to me, that's how a language develops. Everything breeds through metaphors.

Video and film

In the mid-1970s, Nares made a series of short sculptural-related minimal art films. In 1978, she released a no wave 82-minute color Super-8 film entitled Rome 78, her only venture into feature-length, plot-driven film. The narrative is about the Roman emperor Caligula now set in a shabby 1978 East Village apartment. As such, it proposes an analogy between ancient Rome and modern America as cultural empires. Despite its large cast in period costumes, the work is never made out to be a serious undertaking, with actors who interject scenes with self-conscious laughter, and deliver seemingly improvised lines with over the top bravado. The work features No Wave Cinema regular Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks along with artist David McDermott of McDermott & McGough as Caligula, James Chance, John Lurie, Eric Mitchell as a Roman general, Judy Rifka, Jim Sutcliffe, Lance Loud, Mitch Corber, Patti Astor, Anya Phillips as the Queen of Sheba and Kristian Hoffman, among others.

Nares' 2012 video "Street" (with a score composed by Thurston Moore), later acquired by the National Gallery of Art, debuted at the Wadsworth Atheneum and depicted street scenes in Manhattan. The video was filmed with a Phantom Flex camera on the back of a sport utility vehicle, and featured the daily routines of pedestrians, tourists, and even pigeons in the city, as well as more known figures such as the Naked Cowboy. In 2013, "Street" was also exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art alongside 77 works from the museum's collections, including drawings by Francisco Goya. From November 27-29, 2020, the Metropolitan Museum of Art projected "Street" on its Fifth Avenue building.

Selected solo exhibitions

Filmography

References

  1. ↑ "James Nares comes out as trans woman, in Philippe de Montebello Curates at Park Avenue Armory, and More". Art News. 16 July 2019.
  2. ↑ James Nares on Swissre
  3. ↑ Daniel, Gillian (1 March 2014). "Fluid Motion". Elephant Magazine (18): 112–121 – via Frame Publishers.
  4. ↑ O'Brien, Glenn (23 November 2008). "James Nares". Interview Magazine. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  5. ↑ Sussler, Betsy (Spring 1989). "Interview with James Nares". BOMB Magazine. Archived from the original on 14 May 2013. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  6. ↑ Boch, Richard (2017). The Mudd Club. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-62731-051-2. OCLC 972429558.
  7. ↑ Halter, Ed (13 May 2008). "James Nares's Downtown Empire Strikes Back". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 8 July 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  8. ↑ Masters, Marc (2007). No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing. pp. 148–149.
  9. ↑ "Rebellion of the quiet Retrospective of James Nares, No Wave's subtlest filmmaker". Archived from the original on 1 September 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
  10. ↑ Schwendener, Martha (10 August 2013). "A Galloping City Captured in Slow Motion". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ Wilk, Deborah (September 2014). "James Nares". Modern Painters. 26 (8): 40–41 – via Art & Architecture Source.
  12. ↑ Viveros-Fauné, Christian (27 March 2013). "Taking it Slow at the Met's Street". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on 18 October 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  13. ↑ Camhi, Leslie (5 March 2013). "Urban Legends: James Nares Premieres Street at the Met Museum". Vogue Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  14. ↑ "James Nares: Street". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 16 August 2025.

Further reading